Coronavirus: ‘test yourselves for 3 days in a row next week’ – Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam urges residents to use rapid kits for better picture of health crisis
- Chief executive says exercise voluntary but appeals to residents to join and report positive results, arguing this will provide authorities with a clearer picture of situation
- Another 4,475 new Covid-19 infections recorded on Saturday while the Hospital Authority reports 116 fatalities
Hong Kong’s leader has urged all residents across the city to screen themselves for Covid-19 using rapid test kits for three days in a row next week to help authorities identify hidden infections in the community and better assess the true extent of the pandemic.
However, medical experts remained sceptical about the scientific value of the voluntary mass exercise, given that it would rely on a quick-testing method with lower sensitivity and the sincerity of people to report their infections, while providing no picture of past infections.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Saturday called on everyone to test themselves from April 8-10 using kits delivered to their homes by the government, and report any infections to the authorities within 24 hours.
“The absolute [infection] numbers are still high … That suggests that we still have quite a number of silent transmissions in the community. It will be to the benefit of all of us, to the community at large, to try to identify all these infected cases as soon as possible,” she said.
“If I can get a snapshot of how many among the Hong Kong population are infected, it will be beneficial to our future work on determining anti-epidemic measures.”
Lam added the exercise would also pave the way for the crucial reopening of the border with mainland China as early as possible.
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The city confirmed another 4,475 infections on Saturday, the eighth straight day in which cases were under the 10,000 mark as numbers continued to drop, pushing the total tally to 1,167,713.
Eighteen of the latest cases were imported, including 13 travellers who arrived in the city on Friday, when a ban on flights from nine countries was lifted. Just two of the infected arrivals were from the previously banned countries, one each from the Philippines and Britain. The number of imported infections was the highest since March 7, when 32 were recorded.
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The Hospital Authority reported 116 Covid-related fatalities on Saturday, with the overall death toll now standing at 8,061.
Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch at the Centre for Health Protection, said: “The increase in the number of imported cases is expected because previously we had banned some countries from flying to Hong Kong.”
Arrivals who tested positive would be isolated and treated, she added.
Lam, meanwhile, stressed that she was not giving up on plans for mandatory universal testing, with the government still committed to its “dynamic zero” goal of weeding out all infections.
“This is not to replace universal testing,” she said of the call to use rapid kits, adding that authorities were still waiting for the right moment to introduce the wider scheme.
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Lam said the coming exercise would be voluntary, but people were strongly encouraged to join. Only positive results needed to be declared, she said, and guidance would be offered on how to carry out the tests, especially to those who needed special help. Residents will not be restricted from going out.
“[This] is only a voluntary exercise. We can only appeal for people’s cooperation, riding on their aspiration to resume normal daily living as soon as possible,” Lam said.
She acknowledged that some people had been “very resistant” to being sent to community isolation centres but also sought to assure residents that such facilities were well equipped and user-friendly, urging them “not to believe stories on social media”.
Authorities began distributing anti-epidemic packages – containing 20 rapid test kits, 20 KN95 masks and two boxes of proprietary traditional Chinese medicine – to nearly 3 million households on Saturday. The exercise is expected to take a week.
Lam and other senior officials joined workers and volunteers on Saturday to give out the packs. As of 6pm on Saturday, about 1.57 million had been handed out.
The packs were first distributed to those living in subdivided flats and tenement buildings, which often do not have property management, owners’ committees or resident organisations. Ninety collection stations will be set up across the city’s 18 districts from April 6.
Lam said that of the more than 1.1 million infections recorded in the fifth wave, 37 per cent were self-reported rapid antigen test (RAT) results submitted online, totalling more than 425,000 cases.
“In the past week, the number of positive cases found through RAT exceeded the PCR [polymerase chain reaction] results from the Hospital Authority, public labs and private contractors, which is why we considered stepping up a more effective way to use RAT as a tool [to gauge the virus situation],” she said.
Lam said the decision took reference from an ongoing study by the University of Hong Kong in March. The Covid-19 daily point-prevalence surveillance study recruited 10,000 residents citywide to conduct daily rapid tests to project the number of infections in the overall population.
The university study identified both newly infected residents and those who had yet to recover but had a low viral load. It reflected the estimated proportion of the population that was infected on a particular day.
Revealing preliminary findings of the study, Lam said more than 10 per cent of the residents sampled were estimated to be infected in early March, but the figure fell to 1.21 per cent on April 1, meaning there could be between 80,000 and 90,000 cases among the population of more than 7 million at that point in time.
Lam previously said the government was exploring the possibility of asking residents to conduct mass at-home testing by using the rapid kits handed to them.
At the time, she stopped short of revealing whether the measure would be mandatory. A source earlier told the Post it was meant to be “voluntary and supplementary”, which raised questions on the plan’s effectiveness.
Respiratory medicine specialist Dr Leung Chi-chiu said data collected from the voluntary RAT screening would not have much scientific value.
“It’s not only about the sensitivity of the tests, but also there is no way to ensure how many people will get tested or report their results,” Leung said, noting there could be one false positive case in every three infections identified.
He said it would be better to do the mass RAT screening when daily caseloads dropped further, to “low four digits” or “high three digits”.
Government pandemic adviser Professor David Hui Shu-cheong said the RAT screening could be seen as a “rehearsal” for compulsory PCR universal testing although it would not be able to give a full picture of the infection situation.
“We will be able to identify people who are not aware they are carrying the virus, but this is just referring to acute infection. We will not be able to identify people who had been infected [but have recovered]. It will just be acute infections in those three days,” Hui said.
As for using PCR tests for the mass screening drive, Hui earlier on Saturday said this could come into effect if daily caseloads plateaued at three digits, echoing views from top mainland Chinese epidemiologist Dr Liang Wannian, who earlier advised local authorities.
The flight ban on nine countries was lifted on Friday, allowing residents and those with work visas to return to the city from Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States.
Lam said 16 flights from places other than mainland China arrived at Hong Kong International Airport on Friday, welcoming back nearly 2,000 passengers.
In another development, the government said it would gradually provide the new oral antiviral drugs Paxlovid and molnupiravir to private clinics to prescribe to suitable Covid-19 patients for free.
As of April 1, the Hospital Authority had prescribed Pfizer’s Paxlovid and molnupiravir, made by American firm MSD, known as Merck in the United States and Canada, to more than 7,100 and 15,800 patients respectively.
Additional reporting by Leung Pak-hei
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